Thursday, April 24, 2014

Innovating a Roadmap for Customer Experience

"There are no traffic jams along the extra mile." - Roger Staubach, former star NFL quarterback

Organizations that focus on improving the customer experience will strengthen their customer relationships and their overall business performance. Len Ferman knows this first-hand. Len is Managing Director of Ferman Innovation, specializing in generating and evaluating ideas to improve the customer experience. Len is also a world juggling champion. During the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit (TCEL) earlier this month, he reinforced the three principles of new product innovation through his unique presentation. TCEL attendees learned how to juggle scarves while learning how to solve their customer experience challenges using this proven process:

Ideate: Brainstorm with a diverse group to generate a high quantity of possible solutions. Enable all employees to contribute ideas.

Evaluate: Evaluate, cultivate and prioritize the top ideas for implementation

Learning to juggle not only helped TCEL attendees improve their ability to multi-task, increase eye-hand coordination, sharpen their brains and impress their friends, but also provided these valuable insights related to the 3 Steps:

Explore:

Break down complex processes into elementary steps

Learn how to use the tools that are at your disposal

Recognize the patterns and categories in your data

Identify your customers' key problems

Strive for accuracy in basic tasks

Create intentional "wow" experiences

Ideate:

Defer judgment - no idea is a bad idea

Include all parts of your organization in idea generation

Stray out of your comfort zone to generate ideas

Balance different methods of brainstorming

Go for quantity when generating ideas

Great ideas are the result of collaboration and building on others' ideas